Perhaps it’s no surprise that the Cross Media Theatre is so packed – this is only one of two panels ton comics / graphic novels this year. But SelfMadeHero MD Emma Hayley, writer David Hine, Nibbies Bookseller of the Year nominee Gosh!’s Steve Walsh, and host Panel Borders broadcaster Alex Fitch recline rather more comfortably and are ready to go.

Daisy Johnson’s Fen, according to publisher Jonathan Cape, “is a place where animals and people commingle and fuse, where curious metamorphoses take place, where myth and dark magic still linger. So here a teenager may starve herself into the shape of an eel. A house might fall in love with a girl. A woman might give birth to a – well what?”

It’s the kind of mercurial WTF title that nailed itself of its own accord into our June 2016 Book Recommends… And, given I was looking at some articles on music and writing, I just had to ask Daisy if she’d like to share something of that nature as relates to Fen.

Here’s what she had to say… (NB. Links to Apple Music / ITunes provided where available)

When we happened to meet Mary and Bryan Talbot just before Christmas, Mary told us just what they had coming next: The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia, a graphic biography of Louise Michel, the revolutionary feminist dubbed ‘The Red Virgin of Montmartre’, which is publishing in May from Jonathan Cape.

Graphic novel – check. Social importance – check. Heavens, even some relevance to science fiction – check! A worthy and very Carabas title in other words. So we asked Mary if she wouldn’t mind dropping us a few lines on how she came to write – and Bryan to draw – The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia…

Here’s a look at the Graphic Novels Jonathan Cape have coming for you over the period January to June 2016! We’ll be bringing you our particular recommends of all publishers together by month of publication.

Note: Publication dates are accurate at time of writing but can change.

Herein, via links to individual pages, lies the more-or-less complete output of UK SFF and major worldwide Graphic Novel publishers for July to December 2015!

We’ve applied selection criteria with the assumption that readers with a penchant for paranormal romance and titles more for the American market will have no problem finding those elsewhere; reissues and classic reprints are included sparingly.

Here’s a look at the Graphic Novels Jonathan Cape have coming for you over the period July to December 2015! We’ll be bringing you our particular recommends of all publishers together by month of publication.

Note: Publication dates are accurate at time of writing but can change.

Until the panel I’d just attended, of which Karrie Fransman was part, I was rather unaware of her broader work beyond her first and second graphic novels. What had intrigued me most, which I’d heard about in a meeting with one of her editors at Jonathan Cape, was her work for the Red Cross which, I later discovered, won Broken Frontier’s Best One-Shot 2014 award.

Karrie was good enough to agree to a post-panel coffee and interview and, amongst many other things, this was something I was particularly keen to hear about and the first subject we talked about.

We’re lucky to have some interior art to share from Karrie Fransman’s DEATH OF THE ARTIST, published in March 2015… Karrie tells the story though different techniques and media – watercolour, digital art, photography, collage and illustration – and you can see examples below!

There’s another great helping of Graphic Novels / Comic Collections coming our way this month: so here’s our top picks of the fantastical, the weird, the literary and the superheroic all together publishing in May!

Herein, via links to individual pages, lies the more-or-less complete output of UK SFF publishers and the major worldwide Graphic Novel publishers for January to June 2015!

We’ve applied selection criteria with the assumption that readers with a penchant for paranormal romance and titles more for the American market will have no problem finding their next read elsewhere; reissues and back-in-print classic titles are included sparingly.

Here’s a look at the Graphic Novels Jonathan Cape have coming for you over the period January to June 2015! We’ll be bringing you our particular recommends of all publishers together by month of publication. Note: Publication dates are accurate at time of writing but can change.

Joe Sacco is renowned for his non-fiction books of comics journalism like Palestine, Safe Area Gorazde and Footnotes in Gaza. Now in Bumf he returns to his early days as a satirist and underground cartoonist. In the vein of the old underground comix like ZAP or Weirdo, Bumf will be puerile, disgusting, and beyond redemption. It will go where it wants to go, and do what it wants to do. It will also be very funny.